We offer takes-backsies on Fabregas and Giroud, exactly what our team: forwards, playmakers and nostalgia.

In my mind Chelsea haven’t had a squad overhaul since 2013.

Our problem was we went from having a squad full of international captains to a squad full of no-marks with a main player who is treated like a baby and gets away with sauntering through 75% of his matches without breaking sweat. Abramovich’s quest for “winning beautifully” has taken us from being one of Europe’s 2 or 3 best teams year in year out to barely being one of England’s 5 best and not even making a scratch on a European competition in half a decade. At least in Milan’s case you can blame them running out of money, Abramovich and his gang of yes men have intentionally dismantled everything that made the club successful in the hope of winning “better”

RKMF - 05 January 2019 06:30 PM

Chelsea still own Lucas Piazon? When was the last time he even played for them?

Abramovich’s quest for “winning beautifully” has taken us from being one of Europe’s 2 or 3 best teams year in year out to barely being one of England’s 5 best and not even making a scratch on a European competition in half a decade.

I think there’s a much more prosaic reason for Chelsea’s relative decline. And, yes, it is money. Obviously Chelsea haven’t run out of money, but then they have won the league twice in the last four years whereas Milan haven’t finished above sixth since 2013.

If you look at Chelsea’s golden age (which I think you’re taking to be the 5 or so years after Abramovich arrived), Chelsea weren’t just spending more than anyone else in England, they were spending more than twice as much as anyone else. Their net transfer spending in the early Abramovic years was only just surpassed by City in 2010/11 and United in 2016/17 but they were spending that at a time when money went a lot further than it does today. Obviously Chelsea were going to dominate with that kind of gap from the rest of the league.

Abramovich did continue to pump money in, but not at a rate which maintained that gap as the other clubs increased their revenues and spending year after year. And of course, then City came on the scene. Today Chelsea’s spending is at a similar level to Liverpool and Arsenal’s. So they’ve gone from easily the richest club to just one of the group on the rung below the Manchesters. How could they not decline?

On the European scene, if you recall, it wasn’t just Chelsea. All the English clubs were dominating Europe back then. And they’ve all fallen away. I put this down to a couple of things: 1) There was an economic crash and recession in the early 2000s which badly affected some big-spending clubs on the continent. Particularly in Italy, but also the likes of Madrid, Barca, Bayern, Dortmund. It didn’t really affect the premier league because, aside from Leeds, English clubs hadn’t joined in the prior spending frenzy. Juventus largely hadn’t either, but then they had *cough* other problems at that time. Now, and for the past several years, all those clubs have been much better positions to compete. 2) The extreme level of competition at the top of the premier league, and the global popularity of it, has raised the priority of performing in the league versus Europe.

On the European scene, if you recall, it wasn’t just Chelsea. All the English clubs were dominating Europe back then. And they’ve all fallen away. I put this down to a couple of things: 1) There was an economic crash and recession in the early 2000s which badly affected some big-spending clubs on the continent. Particularly in Italy, but also the likes of Madrid, Barca, Bayern, Dortmund. It didn’t really affect the premier league because, aside from Leeds, English clubs hadn’t joined in the prior spending frenzy.

I might have missed the point here or not completely understanding what you’re getting at, but Madrid or Barca? Madrid have had a cash injection by Perez that spawned Galacticos 1.0 in 2000 which essentially saved the club from its stupendous debt. And that came after 2 big CL wins in the 4 years preceding that time. Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham for equivalents of today’s 100-200m euros each summer. Galacticos 2.0 in 2009 transfer window was more or less the same all in one window with Di Maria, Ozil, Khedira, Coentrao et al following it. Real were essentially financially impervious to the crises of the 2000s. Barca was somewhat similar, but their sporting crisis under Gaspart was the pro-Dutch policy in early 2000s which bit them in the backside. Still their finance issue never hit them until end of Laporta presidency with major election selling point for the next president Rosell was setting the club straight.

On the European scene, if you recall, it wasn’t just Chelsea. All the English clubs were dominating Europe back then. And they’ve all fallen away. I put this down to a couple of things: 1) There was an economic crash and recession in the early 2000s which badly affected some big-spending clubs on the continent. Particularly in Italy, but also the likes of Madrid, Barca, Bayern, Dortmund. It didn’t really affect the premier league because, aside from Leeds, English clubs hadn’t joined in the prior spending frenzy.

I might have missed the point here or not completely understanding what you’re getting at, but Madrid or Barca? Madrid have had a cash injection by Perez that spawned Galacticos 1.0 in 2000 which essentially saved the club from its stupendous debt. And that came after 2 big CL wins in the 4 years preceding that time. Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham for equivalents of today’s 100-200m euros each summer. Galacticos 2.0 in 2009 transfer window was more or less the same all in one window with Di Maria, Ozil, Khedira, Coentrao et al following it. Real were essentially financially impervious to the crises of the 2000s. Barca was somewhat similar, but their sporting crisis under Gaspart was the pro-Dutch policy in early 2000s which bit them in the backside. Still their finance issue never hit them until end of Laporta presidency with major election selling point for the next president Rosell was setting the club straight.

Here’s an article from 2002 with Zidane saying he was prepared to take a pay cut due to the economic crisis happening at Madrid, and across other European clubs. Yes, they signed Beckham the season after that, but they had to sell Makelele at the same time to balance the books (which neatly brings us back to the topic of this thread). Not saying they were suddenly paupers but the transfers dried up. They went from signing Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo for 60m, 77.5m, 45m euros between 2000-2002 to top transfers in 2004 and 2005 being Walter Samuel and a little known 19 year-old centre back from Sevilla for 25m euros a piece.

On the European scene, if you recall, it wasn’t just Chelsea. All the English clubs were dominating Europe back then. And they’ve all fallen away. I put this down to a couple of things: 1) There was an economic crash and recession in the early 2000s which badly affected some big-spending clubs on the continent. Particularly in Italy, but also the likes of Madrid, Barca, Bayern, Dortmund. It didn’t really affect the premier league because, aside from Leeds, English clubs hadn’t joined in the prior spending frenzy.

I might have missed the point here or not completely understanding what you’re getting at, but Madrid or Barca? Madrid have had a cash injection by Perez that spawned Galacticos 1.0 in 2000 which essentially saved the club from its stupendous debt. And that came after 2 big CL wins in the 4 years preceding that time. Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham for equivalents of today’s 100-200m euros each summer. Galacticos 2.0 in 2009 transfer window was more or less the same all in one window with Di Maria, Ozil, Khedira, Coentrao et al following it. Real were essentially financially impervious to the crises of the 2000s. Barca was somewhat similar, but their sporting crisis under Gaspart was the pro-Dutch policy in early 2000s which bit them in the backside. Still their finance issue never hit them until end of Laporta presidency with major election selling point for the next president Rosell was setting the club straight.

Here’s an article from 2002 with Zidane saying he was prepared to take a pay cut due to the economic crisis happening at Madrid, and across other European clubs. Yes, they signed Beckham the season after that, but they had to sell Makelele at the same time to balance the books (which neatly brings us back to the topic of this thread). Not saying they were suddenly paupers but the transfers dried up. They went from signing Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo for 60m, 77.5m, 45m euros between 2000-2002 to top transfers in 2004 and 2005 being Walter Samuel and a little known 19 year-old centre back from Sevilla for 25m euros a piece.

The variable wages weren’t solely a side-effect of managed wage ladder post-crisis. To my knowledge tax laws were also quite a burden back then for big money sporting investors. Selling Makelele is famously a decision not driven by business sense, but Flo’s love for attackers in most spots on the pitch. He sold everyone that was unexciting, couldn’t sell a shirt and didn’t know how to kick a ball forward and did the dirty work i.e. Campo, Hierro, Makelele. Most defensive players in that weird 4-4-2 they played through that time were Helguera, Guti or Solari.
The relative decrease in Galactico spending was precisely because of public backlash he got for being a tool, not knowing you’ve got to defend every now and then, and that you can’t just buy Owen when you’ve already got Figo, Zidane, Raul, Morientes and Ronaldo. He was forced out by the board soon after his transfer decisions got exposed by Rijkaard’s Barcelona who weren’t shying away from spending either, even if they didn’t pay a whole lot for single players.

But yeah, you can ignore my tangent otherwise. Just not so convinced of the narrative, even if Chelsea’s woes are part of these sequences of events.

I think this is all relevant but I don’t it couldn’t have been overcome with better planning. To go through some sort of timeline going back to what I’d call the last great Chelsea team of 2010 (sorry for how long this is going to get)
Summer 2010: Abramovich decides its time for the team to get younger, moving on Deco, Joe Cole, Ballack, Belletti and Carvalho – no longer all starters but all winners and leaders. The only two senior signings were Benayoun and Ramires. In January David Luiz signs, a good young talent; however we decide not to pursue our long standing interest in Sergio Aguero, instead deciding to spend £50m on the already clearly declining Abramovich pet project Andriy Shev-sorry, Fernando Torres. Despite finishing 2nd Ancelotti gets fired.

Summer 2011: AVB is brought in with the remit of continuing to get younger and improve the football being played. The first youth farm signings happen (namely Lukaku) but in terms of senior players this new, high-lined style is meant to happen with Mata, Meireles, Romeu (and Cahill in January) and the group already there, noted for being brilliant at the exact opposite things AVBs teams were supposed to do. The only outgoings are Anelka and Alex in January meaning we get the wonderful sight of John Terry playing a high line and the “old guard” seeming to ignore everything AVB says. Abramovich decides, rather than giving this new strategy time, or perhaps helping the coach a bit more in the market, to sack him. It does end well though.

Summer 2012: Having fluked the big fish we’ve now done what Abramovich wanted, so logically it’s long-term time – this does actually begin to happen, accelerating his previous young/attacking strategy by bringing in Hazard and Oscar to join Mata as part of his long term aim of getting in Guardiola to oversee this new amazing style of football he wants, once he’s dispensed of Di Matteo.

Summer 2013: Guardiola has turned Chelsea down, rather than looking for a coach with a record of using young players and playing attacking football Abramovich goes for quite literally the complete opposite, Jose Mourinho. Things go ok with our new, contented Jose.

Summer 2014: Abramovich actually listens to what his manager wants, and in come his choices of Fabregas and Costa to join Matic, signed in the January. Chelsea proceed to absolutely saunter the league.

Summer 2015: Mourinho’s reward from Abramovich for winning the league is to get absolutely nothing that he wanted – asking for John Stones and ending up with Papy Djilobodji remaining the high note of a ridiculous summer. All the while this has been going on Mourinho has been getting rid of the majority of the young players brought in, De Bruyne, Salah, Lukaku etc. The predictable Mourinho meltdown happens and Chelsea have their first finish of lower than 6th since 1995-96.

Summer 2016: To replace the manager who lost his head when he didn’t get what he wanted, here comes the notoriously relaxed Antonio Conte. Courtesy of having no European competition and him being an exceptional coach, we storm to the second oddest Premier League title win ever.

Summer 2017: Much like his predecessor, Conte’s reward from Abramovich for winning the league is to get absolutely nothing that he wanted. Much like his predecessor, Conte hits the self destruct button and it all goes to shit, we end up 5th.

18 months on it’s back to the attractive football idea, with the core parts of about 3 different squads trying to pull it off and no technical director in sight.

Almost every single year there is Abramovich either undermining a manager or making a drastic change to his “philosophy”. “We’re winning but the squad is too old. The squad is young but we aren’t winning. We’re winning but we aren’t playing good football. The football is good but we’re not winning. We’re winning but we’re losing money. We’re making money but we’re not winning”.

That’s not to say all the decisions are bad, or even the decisions mentioned above were all wrong – AVB’s spell at Spurs suggested even given another couple of years he probably wouldn’t work with us, and both Mourinho and Conte’s track record suggested they’d eventually blow everything up (though that begs the question why the hell would you give the former such control over what was in theory a long term strategy).

BUT what it does show is a complete lack of thinking from the person who, ultimately, makes the decisions at the club. You can chop and change managers every year if you have a long term strategy, it worked well for us from 2003-10 because we had a strategy of filling the squad with some of the best players of the 21st century, most of whom were able to drag performances out of themselves when things were going wrong. The last 5 years of Ferguson’s spell at Utd show you can get away with having no discernible strategy if you’re lucky enough to have the greatest manager of all time. Currently we have no strategy and no Ferguson.

We’re never going to be the size of Man Utd or have their commercial appeal, and we’ll never be able to match City’s spending power, but Utd have been shit for 5 years and we had a 6 year head start on City in terms of being mega-rich, had we put in place a proper strategy then we should be cashing in now rather than fading away. And if City’s dominance was inevitable due to their wealth then fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re definitively behind two sides in Tottenham and Liverpool who don’t have more spending power than us, and are no better than a good-not-great Arsenal squad with a good-not-great coach.

Read a Squawka article of Sarri saying he wasn’t told Pulisic would be signed, only that he was asked if he liked him a month ago. Damn Roman, could at least give your managers a courtesy call sometimes lol.

I don’t think it’s going to work out for Sarri at Chelsea. I know that’s a sweeping statement, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s started off well, so I can’t see it getting a whole lot better.

Perhaps it’s solely Roman, as he’s the common thread with the managers etc. I think they stayed a little safe in getting Sarri in after Conte. I never seek out a Chelsea game to watch, might say more about me than them mind. AVB was probably the biggest risk they took, and the idea of him was young, exciting etc, but since then it seems to be more the hard line managers.

I look at Pep, Klopp, Poch etc and just think these are the IN manager types right now, Chelsea could do with a bit of positive life back into them

Wonder if the UK press will backtrack on their ‘hurr durr Sarri didn’t know anything about Pulisic shirt sales shirt sales’ narrative. Probably not. The Collymores of the world have spoken, and thus the narrative is set in stone.

I don’t think it’s going to work out for Sarri at Chelsea. I know that’s a sweeping statement, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s started off well, so I can’t see it getting a whole lot better.

Perhaps it’s solely Roman, as he’s the common thread with the managers etc. I think they stayed a little safe in getting Sarri in after Conte. I never seek out a Chelsea game to watch, might say more about me than them mind. AVB was probably the biggest risk they took, and the idea of him was young, exciting etc, but since then it seems to be more the hard line managers.

I look at Pep, Klopp, Poch etc and just think these are the IN manager types right now, Chelsea could do with a bit of positive life back into them

Can’t see any reason to panic. Results-wise Sarri’s on course for 80 points for the season - can’t see any way that’s anything but a good return for Chelsea in their current situation, especially in a first season. Pep got 78 points in his first season at City, Klopp 60 points (then 76 in his first full season), Poch 64 points.

Under the bonnet, defensively Chelsea seem to be about as solid as they were under (the good seasons of) Mourinho and Conte, with a small improvement in attacking play. Main problem there at the moment is they aren’t finishing chances at the high rate all the other top teams are.

I think things are going ok, but I wouldn’t go further than that - though to be honest it’s hard to make a proper judgement because the personnel seem far less suited to “Sarriball” than I was anticipating. We started the season well but have got no better and teams seem to have worked out that if you stop Jorginho you can stop the team because we don’t really have any ideas beyond boring the opposition into submission with 5 yard passes in the hope they make a mistake, or that Hazard does something brilliant.

But as I say, it’s hard to really know the viability of this long term when the players seem so incredibly unsuited to it, in fact I’d say that Rudiger, Kepa and Kante are the only players that definitely are and who we know will be here next season (Hazard/Luiz). We aren’t where I was hoping we’d be at this point but I’m a pessimist so maybe it’s better than I thought, as you say the numbers aren’t bad at all.

They were supposedly ‘interested’ last season as well tbf, before CH-O was even on the scene. But given that Malcom is supposedly part of the bid, it wouldn’t exactly help clear a path.

Amount of business we could end up doing this month is mind-blowing for a January. Everyone raves on about the transfer ban as if it’s a done thing, but even if it was to come we’d be able to appeal it and get another window in so it can’t just be that.

So it looks like we’ll be taking Higuain on an 18-month loan. At least there’s no obligation to spend a huge chunk of cash on him permanently, which Milan obviously weren’t willing to do either. Juve and Milan bigwigs conveniently in Jeddah so there’s ample opportunity for them to meet and resolve things at the Milan end. Milan could be going for Piatek to replace him, which could delay things. Also Atleti stumping up the necessary package for a Morata loan. So this will likely roll on for at least another week.

And to think, last year’s three-pronged CFC-AFC-BVB striker transfer was billed as a unique, one-off scenario.

Barella not keen on leaving Cagliari so looks like Paredes will be the Fabregas replacement.

Higuain is the best available option imo, 6 month loan would be better than 18 but it is what it is. Paredes has a good reputation but I can’t say I’ve seen enough to judge, mediocre spell in Russia doesn’t scream “immediate PL quality” to me though.

Everton, Napoli and Fiorentina reportedly circling for Bats so his mooted loan to Monaco could be a non-starter. Would love a bit of part-exchange action with Napoli on Milik, though it will never happen.

Morata has seemingly played his last game in a Chelsea shirt, perhaps Simeone will snap him out of his existential malaise.

Guess that means they’re keen on giving Rabiot a really, really fun final 6 months at the club.

Not the PSG thread, obviously, but what’s with the Rabiot pettiness? I mean he hasn’t shown himself in good light, but are they so petty they’d rather keep him training with the reserves for 6 months rather than sell him to Barcelona now for a couple of mill? He’s CL tied isn’t he? If the rule hasn’t changed, surely just let him go to Barca.

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